Spooky Season 2020

Despite not being able to go out and do many activities, I still managed to have a pretty fun halloween season! I started decorated for halloween in early September and enjoyed the decor all the way through the first part of November. I decorated my front porch with the pumpkins I  got at the pumpkin patch (one either got stolen by a young hooligan walking home from school or got blown away by the insanely strong Lehi winds)

I hadn't decorated for Halloween for a couple of years, so it was really fun to get out all my spooky decor and enjoy it for such a long time.

The kitties were really excited about the fall decor

I got really into trying out as many fall treats as I could find. This was my haul from Trader Joes. This was me being somewhat restrained, there was way more I wanted to try, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

I also tried out the seasonal macron flavors at Fiiz drinks, caramel apple and pumpkin spice. I liked the apple one the best.

When I went on one of my fall drives with Beth and Mom in early fall, we got dinner at Culvers and Beth and I split their seasonal pumpkin pie shake, and it was so divine. That spurred a fun, season long journey of trying out all the pumpkin shakes I could find, and ranking them to find the best one that I could look forward to getting every year. I was able to try out 5 and I rank them from best to worst as follows:

1. Culvers (I never could find one better even though I tried!) it was so creamy and tasted exactly like a pumpkin pie, it was pure heaven

2. Freddys, it was similar to the Culvers one, not quite the depth of flavor but still pretty amazing, and had chunks of pie crust in it, delicious!

3. Shake Shack this one was pretty good, but was also super sweet, I couldn't finish the whole thing

4. Arctic Circle a pretty solid attempt at pumpkin spice treat, it was fairly basic, nothing special about it but nothing really wrong with it either

5. Dairy Queen now this surprised me, DQ usually nails their shake flavors. I drove pretty far to try this one out because I was certain it was going to be amazing, but in actuality it wasn't nearly as creamy as the others, it was kinda watery and icy and the flavor wasn't as strong. There were graham cracker chunks mixed in, which was a fun attempt at an add in, but the pie crust pieces at Freddy's were better.

I had a little buddy join me on my trip to DQ, she had a great time.

Speaking of taste testing yummy fall treats, we did several, super fun, Utah Taste Off kits during spooky season. These awesome kits were such a life savor in the summer and fall of 2020, they gave us something fun and yummy to look forward to every week.

The fall flavored cupcakes were a big hit with the family. The flavors included were:

Pecan Pie with Whipped Brown Sugar Frosting 

Churro

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip

Carmel Apple Spice

Maple Brown Sugar with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting 

Pumpkin Spice

Another super fun and unique kit was Mac and Cheese! I was surprised by the variety they were able to find, each one tasted really different.

And we of course had to participate in the all pumpkin desserts kit! The desserts included were:

Pumpkin Cheesecake with whipped cream

Pumpkin Spice Beignet

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffin

Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Donut with Sweet Glaze

We were quite surprised when all of our favorite was the pumpkin cranberry muffin! We are a family of sweet tooths, so we thought one of the sweeter entries would take the cake.

On Taste Off days, mom would make us yummy, and often times, beautiful dinners. One night we had a gorgeous charcuterie board with apple spice slushies to drink, out on the patio, it was such a fun night.

Another big highlight of this year's spooky season was weekly movie nights with Angie and Laura. To keep everyone safe and Covid free, we would meet on Laura's back porch, she had her furniture arranged so that we were super spread out and we each got a big chair or couch to ourselves, it was so comfortable! We could cuddle up in sweatshirts and blankets and Laura even got big heaters when the weather started getting a little cooler. Once the heaters were added in, I didn't even need a sweater or a blanket, they were really great at keeping us warm.

It started out as just a movie night, then it became a movie night with special treats and halloween candy, then it morphed into getting take out for dinner and a movie, which then somehow became Laura cooking us dinner before our movie and then our last couple of weeks it was a homemade dinner AND dessert AND halloween candy AND special drinks with a movie thrown in at the end. We had so much fun, it was so great to be able to spend some real quality time with some of my besties who I hadn't been able to see for most of the year due to Covid. I was so thrilled when we could work out a way to see each other but still keep everyone safe. 

I also got to meet sweet baby Alex for the first time during these amazing movie nights! It was always from a far and we even would wear masks as an extra precaution even though we were outside and spaced really far apart. But I was so thrilled to be able to spend time with him as a newborn!

Laura's meals were always so amazing, so full of flavor and so filling and healthy. They were always something I looked forward to all week long. Lu caught me doing happy food dances in my corner while I ate her food a couple of times ... 

We watched so many fun Halloween movies, some of which I hadn't ever seen before! Throughout the season we watched:

Ghostbusters (2016)

Haunted Mansion

Hocus Pocus (Special edition with all sorts of fun commentary and BTS info)

Clue

 The Burbs

Young Frankenstein

Like restaurant quality presentation and taste, I feel so lucky to be her friend!

One week for dessert, Lu got a chocolate caramel cake from the Chocolate and it may be one of the best chocolate cakes I have ever had. It had crushed up meringue in between the layers that added a lovely little crunch mixed in with the layers of extra moist cake and smooth creamy frosting. It had it all, textures, flavors and even a little meringue ghost on each piece.

Even work felt extra festive this year. On my daily walks with Oscar, we passed by so many fun yard decorations, his neighborhood really goes all out.

The most 2020 halloween display ever, complete with mask and toilet paper.

In addition to all the silly halloween decorations, we also enjoyed some beautiful fall leaves.

This house is on my street and I always loved driving by it, so fun and creative.

On a Sunday walk with Beth and the kids one week, we discovered that the Wilcox's are big halloween fans and go above and beyond with their decorations both inside and outside. We had a fun time exploring their skeleton gravyard which had skeletons from dinosaurs to spiders.